Council | Governance

The Council is the governing body of LSHTM and has overall responsibility for its operational and strategic management.

The Council delegates a number of management responsibilities to Council committees.

Council members fulfil their roles in accordance with the constitutional document of this Higher Education Institution (HEI), its Royal Charter, and subject to regulations for the operation of an HEI as determined by government and other external agencies.

The governing body of LSHTM is its Council which is supported by various sub-committees.

Minutes of Council

Membership of Council

Don Robert (Chair of Council)

Don Robert was appointed as Chair of Council on 1 April 2020 and is currently Chairman of the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG).

Prior to assuming his current role at LSEG, Don Robert served in a variety of roles with the multinational information company Experian plc, including Chairman (2014 - 2019), Group Chief Executive (2005 - 2014), and CEO of its North American business (2001 - 2005).

Don Robert graduated from Oregon State University. He is a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation, as well as an Honorary Group Captain in the Royal Air Force. He has also served as a non-executive Director of Court for the Bank of England, Senior Independent Director of Compass Group, and holds a variety of private equity roles. Prior to joining Experian, Don held executive positions with First American Financial Corp. and U.S. Bank.

Liam Smeeth (Director)

Liam Smeeth is professor of clinical epidemiology and Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He is also a practicing doctor in general practice.

During his career he was supported by fellowships from MRC, NIHR and Wellcome. He was previously a Trustee of the British Heart Foundation and a non-executive director of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.

He is a member of the strategic oversight committee for UK Biobank and an elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Much of his research is based on making better use of computerised clinical data for research, and he co-led the creation of the OpenSafely resource in response to the Covid pandemic. His broad interests include disease aetiology, drug effects, genetics and non-communicable diseases in low income settings.

Hitesh Patel (Deputy Chair)

Hitesh is a qualified Chartered Accountant and currently a Non-Executive Director on the Boards of Enstar Group, Capital Home Loans Limited and Landmark Mortgages Limited. Hitesh is Chairman of the Board of Capital Home Loans and chairs the Insurance Committee at the ICAEW.

Hitesh was previously Chief Executive Officer of Lucida plc a life insurance company writing bulk annuity business. He was previously the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Investment Officer of Lucida. Prior to joining Lucida in June 2007, Hitesh was a senior insurance partner in KPMG London and was responsible for providing audit, accounting and regulatory advisory services. Hitesh was previously a Non-Executive Director and Chair of the Audit Committees of Aviva Life Holdings and Aviva Insurance Limited.

Nazira Amra (Independent Member)

Nazira Amra, B.Sc, M.D., MBA is a physician and experienced senior pharmaceutical commercial leader who has spent the last 25 years working at the intersection of both strategy and operations in both big and small pharma, delivering results in product launch as well as later stages of the product life cycle across developed and emerging markets. She currently serves as VP Corporate and Commercial Strategy at Exscientia, a global pharmatech company using patient-first artificial intelligence (AI) to discover better medications, faster.

Nazira has lived and worked on 4 continents, experiencing first-hand the vast discrepancies in access to healthcare. She is passionate about championing optimization of care across the treatment continuum -from prevention to increased access to novel medicines, globally.

Angela Darlington (Independent Member)

Angela Darlington was the CEO of Aviva’s UK Life Insurance business from April 2019 to 2021. Angela was responsible for leading the UK life insurance business and was a member of Aviva’s Executive Committee.

Prior to her CEO role, Angela was the Group Chief Risk Officer for Aviva Plc, for 4 years. She was responsible for leading the Risk Function at a Group level and a member of the Group Executive team. As part of her role, Angela chaired the Group Operational Risk Committee and was a member of numerous subsidiary boards. Angela was also the 2019 Chair of the European Chief Risk Officer Forum.

Since joining Aviva in 2001, Angela has held a variety of actuarial roles including UK Life Chief Actuary and UK Life Chief Risk Officer for three years. Angela began her career as an actuarial consultant for twelve years, working on a wide variety of actuarial assignments in many countries and qualified as an Actuary in 1994.

Diana Layfield (Independent Member)

Diana is Vice President at Google, leading efforts to bring payments and commerce to its Next Billion Users. Previously, she served as Chief Executive Officer, Africa Region, at Standard Chartered Bank where she was responsible for leading SCB’s businesses across Wholesale, Investment and Consumer banking in the 37 countries where the bank operated.

At Standard Chartered, Diana held a variety of senior management roles including Group Head of Strategy & Corporate Development, Chief Operating Officer for the Wholesale Bank (85% of the Group’s revenues and profit) and Global Head of Global Corporate Client Coverage. Before joining Standard Chartered in 2004, Diana was chief executive of Finexia Ltd, a technology company providing online processing and credit scoring systems for banks. Prior to this, she worked for McKinsey & Company from 1995 to 2000 where she was a sector lead in biotech/life sciences and financial services.

Diana graduated from Oxford University and holds a Masters in Public Administration & International Economics from Harvard University. She is also a non¬executive director of Aggreko plc, a FTSE 100 power company.

Precious Lunga (Independent Member)

Dr Precious Lunga is CEO and Co-Founder of Baobab Circle, a health technology company using mobile phones to deliver innovative health solutions across Africa. Previously she was at Econet Wireless where she established the mHealth business unit to deliver health services across the mobile phone network. Whilst at Econet she established a mobile health platform in Zimbabwe and Lesotho which attracted more than 750,000 customers within its first year of launch.

Dr Lunga trained as a neuroscientist and epidemiologist. She has worked as a lab research scientist in the biotech industry and academia. As an epidemiologist at the Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit Precious was involved in conducting large scale multi-centre HIV microbicide prevention clinical trials in Eastern and Southern Africa. This was followed by a period of working at UNAIDS Geneva where she was involved in spearheading the implementation of male circumcision for HIV prevention.

She has been strategic advisor at the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation funding health programmes across Africa. Dr Lunga is an advocate for the use of technology to improve access to health. She has been featured at the Women of the World festival and media programs including the BBC World Service Forum Programme and Sky News.

Dr Lunga is a member of the boards of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Malaria Consortium, and Grassroots Soccer UK. She also sits on the Advisory Board for Weidenfeld-Hoffman Trust’s Leadership and Scholarships Programme.

Dr Lunga has a PhD in Neuroscience from Cambridge University, MSc Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a BSc (Hons) Neuroscience from Edinburgh University. She is a Yale World Fellow.

Indrani Misra (SRC President)

Biography will be available shortly.

Lindsay Northover (Independent Member)

Rt Hon Baroness (Lindsay) Northover was Africa Minister in the Department for International Development, 2014-15, and prior to that served in various Departments including Health and Education.

She was the Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy to Angola and Zambia (2016-20) and the Liberal Democrats’ Lords Foreign Affairs Spokesperson (2016-2021).

Lindsay served on the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Select Committee, and is currently on the Science and Technology Select Committee.

She was a Trustee of UNICEF UK, the Overseas Development Institute, the Tropical Health and Education Trust and the Malaria Consortium. She was on the Advisory Council of Wilton Park, and is Honorary Associate Professor at Imperial College’s Institute of Global Health Innovation. She is on the Board of Pensana plc.

Her first degree was from Oxford University. She gained an MA and PhD in the USA, after which she was at University College London and the Wellcome Institute.

Mohamed Osman (Independent Member)

Mohamed Osman leads Spring Impact’s operations in the UK. Spring Impact tackles the issue of scale; its mission is to help the most successful social impact projects scale up. A senior non-profit executive, Mohamed is committed to delivering innovative solutions to social challenges.

Mohamed has over 20 years of experience implementing programmes and building partnerships in global health, social enterprise and humanitarian assistance across 25 countries. Mohamed was previously Global Grants Director at the Elton John AIDS Foundation (EJAF), where he spent a decade growing the Foundation to become one of the foremost independent AIDS charities in the world reaching over 100 million people with HIV information, testing, and treatment.

Mohamed graduated from London School of Economics and the University of Nairobi.

Mark Poulton (Independent Member)

Mark was appointed as an Independent Member of Council in December 2022. He is currently a partner at Clifford Chance, a leading international law firm headquartered in London.

During his 35-year career at Clifford Chance Mark has become a trusted adviser to leading corporates across a wide range of sectors on domestic and international acquisitions and disposals, business partnerships, restructuring and governance. During the COVID pandemic he was part of a team advising Her Majesty's Government on securing the development and supply of COVID-19 vaccines and investment to scale up COVID-19 vaccine and gene therapy manufacturing capability in the UK.

Through the second half of his career, he has held various management roles culminating in leadership of the firm's Corporate Practice in London for a four-year term. He is a member of the firm's Inclusion Committee and sponsor of Accelerate>>>, the firm's gender parity affinity group.

He is a qualified lawyer and graduated with a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Nottingham.

Mike Turner (Independent Member)

Mike Turner is a former Director of Science at Wellcome. He joined Wellcome in 2014 as Head of Infection and Immunobiology and in 2019, took on the role of Director of Science, responsible for leading the Science Division and managing a broad portfolio of research funding. He also led work on specific funding initiatives in response to the SARS-CoV2 pandemic; Ebola, Zika and Yellow Fever epidemics and on snakebites.

Before joining Wellcome Mike was at the University of Glasgow, UK where he held Beit, Royal Society and Leverhulme Fellowships. Latterly, he became Professor of Parasitology and was at various times Head of Division, Assistant Director of Faculty, and Deputy Dean of the Graduate School.

He is currently an Honorary Professor at the University of Glasgow and a consultant for the WHO.

Jocelyn Prudence (Interim Secretary to Council)

Jocelyn Prudence is LSHTM's University Secretary and Governance Consultant. MBA qualified, Jocelyn has undertaken successful interim, consultancy and substantive senior management roles in a number of higher education institutions. She has recently completed a senior management interim position at LAMDA, following College Secretary and COO assignments with the Royal College of Art. Previous interim roles have been held with Coventry, Lancaster, Northampton and Stirling universities.

Mishal Khan (Elected Staff Member)

Mishal Khan is an Associate Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, with an honorary position at the Aga Khan University in Pakistan. Dr Khan’s specialist expertise is on improving systems and policies – with a focus on governance - for infectious disease control in South and Southeast Asia. She has led projects in Pakistan, China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Cambodia over the past 15 years and prior to this worked as a strategy consultant advising pharmaceutical companies. In addition to a PhD and MSc from LSHTM, Dr Khan holds an MA in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge. In recognition of her expertise, Dr Khan has been appointed as a consultant for the leading UK policy think-tank, the Centre on Universal Health at Chatham House, and is on the expert panel of the World Health Organisation’s tuberculosis public-private mix group. She is an editor for two of international health systems research journals: Health Policy and Planning journal and BMC Public Health. She has authored over 50 peer-reviewed papers in international journals and numerous book chapters.

Sunil Sharma (Elected Staff Member)

Sunil joined the School in June 2018, having previously worked for many years in the Corporate Sector for Barclays Bank, Travelex and AIG. He also has significant experience working for the Government, having spent 5 years at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and a year in the Metropolitan Police’s Counter-Terrorism unit.

Sunil is the Head of Finance Business Partners at the School and his team are responsible for providing financial and strategic support and advice to the Faculties, Professional Service Areas and the Africa Units. Sunil oversees the production of the monthly Management Accounts and coordinates the yearly budget cycle. Other responsibilities include completing the yearly TRAC exercise and improving commercial processes such as course costing and fee setting and updating and improving reporting.

Sunil is a graduate in Biology from Chelsea College London University and holds a PGCE in Science from Nottingham University. He is also an associate member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA).

Sunil is also a keen traveller, who enjoys reading, cooking, going to the cinema and when he gets the chance visiting the City Ground to watch Nottingham Forest!

Kevin Tetteh (Elected Staff Member)

Kevin Tetteh is an elected staff member.

Dr Kevin Tetteh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Infection Biology, within the Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases. Kevin is a specialist in infectious diseases and has led the development of a number of multicenter multiplex surveillance platforms and has acted as the focal point supporting collaborative research with international partners. More recently, Kevin has been involved in coordinating the surveillance of largescale immuno-epidemiological surveillance studies for malaria, Ebola and COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2. He is the associate editor for Frontiers in Medicine and Frontiers in Public Health, as well as the handling editor for Frontiers in Immunology, as well as contributing to many other peer-reviewed journals. Kevin is a member of International Faculty within the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP) at the University of Ghana. He recently joined the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) mentor Leadership Development Program and is the author of over 60 peer-reviewed research publications.

Effua Usuf (Elected Staff Member)

Dr Effua Usuf, a Clinical epidemiologist, is a senior scientist at the medical Research Council Unit The Gambia at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (MRCG @ LSHTM). She serves as a member of the Gambia Medical and Dental Council, and LSHTM Council.

She trained as a medical doctor partly in Sierra Leone and Ghana, and obtained her Masters and subsequently PhD both at LSHTM. Her research, which aims to generate evidence for child health policies, has focused mainly on pneumococcal carriage and impact of vaccines. She has over 30 publications in peer reviewed journals.

She has been active in the COVID 19 national response and works closely with Epidemiology and Disease Control Department, Ministry of Health The Gambia.